()iMK).s & Vii;\^rnnLiterature & Ur-RealitynGeorge Konrad: The Loser; HarcourtnBrace Jovanovich; New York.nMilan Kxindera: The Joke; Harper &nRow; New York.nby Gary Vasilashnvine of the ways that man knowsnhimself is through writing. Writing ofnany type—^from the driest technical reportnto the most flamboyant fantasynstory—is a fiction. That is, it is beyondnveracity. To call all written works fictionsnis not to diminish their importancenin any way; fictions in this sense do notnapply to superfluous constructs. Indeed,nthey are the bases of cultures. The Biblenis a fiction in the sense that its messagencannot be empirically proven. It existsntor belief And for those who do believe,nnothing is more real. All forms of literaturenare fiction. It is extraordinarily hardnto say that a particular piece of writing isna bona fide work of literature for reasonsn(a), (b), (c), etc. Everyone knows thatnThe Odyssey and Ulysses are fictions thatnare literature; their qualifications fornfitting within that category change withnthe person providing the parameters.nOne way that a work of literature can bendefined is to say that it is a work that hasntime, field, and depth, and that it is a universe.n(The Bible, then, is not, as somenuniversity classes would have it, literature,nas it doesn’t comprise a universenbut the universe, as far as its believersnare concerned [did anyone ever readnHomer as gospel?], which is not to denynits obvious literary qualities.) The universencreated in a work of literature cannotnbe a hermetic one; its signs must benaccessible to an audience. Literature isnpublic. It permits the reader to knownsomething about himself, his world, andnperhaps his god. Followed to an extreme,nthis argument might lead to thenMr. Vasilash is associate editor of thenChronicles.n0nChronicles of Culturenconclusion that Time magazine’s issuesnare chapters in the novel. After all, it is anfiction by the definition used here. Thenwriting it contains is artful. Its subjectnmatter is the given universe; its departmentsninclude “People,” “The World,”nand even “Religion.” However, everyonenknows that Time is not literature.nOne thing more than any other preventsnits acceptance as such. Although thisnmay sound like an appeal to Keats, itnmust be stated that literature providesnTruth. Time magazine purportedly reportsnthe “facts.” When it reports, for example,nthat the space shutde went upnand came down, it is being, in its ownnway, truthful (i.e., R. Buckminster Fullernwould point up that “up” and “down”nmake little sense when the earth is picturednas being something other thannflat). A reader of every issue of/”/me willnhave the command of a large number ofn”facts” (pieces of information aboutnwhat’s taken as objective reality), butnwhat will he really know?nConsider the Soviet Union. What doesna Westerner who has never been theren(or even one who has gone Intourist)nknow about it? Perhaps he knows a greatnmany “things” if he reads Time magazinenfaithfully, and even more if he supplementsnhis collection of pieces throughnthe use of other periodicals. However,nthat person really doesn’t know much atnaU about the Soviet Union. The readernlooking for Truth (as opposed to Gradgrindiannfacts ) would find it in the pagesnof Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day innthe Life of Ivan Denisovich. Life doesnnot consist just of a series of facts (thingsndone), of discrete events, of causes andneffects. It is simultaneously more simplenand more complex than that. The role ofnthe writer of journalism is to attempt toncreate facts, events, causes. The role ofnnnthe writer of literature is to put togetherna series of public signs that, throughnsome synergistic effect that involves thensigns, their place and time, the writer,nand the reader, has a meaning whichntranscends the apparent coded messagenon the page: Truth is made manifest.nThis is not to say that a Western diplomatnwho may have to deal with YurinAndropov should skip the avaUable journalisticnreports and just read Solzhenitsyn.nHowever, this is to say that said diplomatnwould miss an entire facet of thensituation, the dominant face behind thenmask, if he were to go without readingnSolzhenitsyn.nvFeorge (Gyorgy) Konrad, a Hungarian,nand Mflan Kundera, a Czech,nprobably aren’t the Solzhenitsyns ofntheir respective homelands. Still, theynare authors of literature which, in additionnto serving the needs of their people,nwas apparently written so that Westernersncan better understand Hungary andnCzechoslovakia. For the people in thesencountries, the works act as an aidememoire.nFor the rest, they are a revelation.nTruth knows no political, geographical,nor chronological boundaries.nConcern for the West is fairly clear innboth novels. Kundera writt u his prefacento The Joke that the novci, much tonhis amazement, was published “withoutna trace of censorship!” in 1967, “innCommunist Czechoslovakia one yearnbefore the Prague Spring.” Undoubtedlynit was published in a limited edition, onenthat would be rapidly bought up and sondisappear. The book was banned innCzechoslovakia after the military invasionnof 1968; it was removed fromnlibrary shelves, erased from literarynhistories. Kundera was forced to emigrate.nKundera’s amazement about thenoriginal uncensored publication indicatesnthat he knew beforehand that hisnbook would have a difBcult official receptionnat best. The criticism in thennovel of the people in the communistn